Score International sends Christians on short-term ministries. It has a four-star rating from Charity Navigator and is based in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Lizette Beard is project manager for LifeWay Research, where she has coordinated projects about megachurches and multisite churches. LifeWay is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and is based in Nashville, Tenn.

Sandra Barnes is a professor of human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., whose research interests include the sociology of religion. She is the author of The Black Mega Church: Framing and Addressing HIV/AIDS and Poverty in the Age of Health and Wealth Theology.

Gary L. Matthews is a Bahá’í author, publisher and lecturer. His publications include numerous short works on the Bahá’í Faith, Christianity and Islam, and the book He Cometh With Clouds: A Bahá’í View of Christ’s Return. He manages Stonehaven Press, which publishes Bahá’í literature, in Knoxville, Tenn.

John J. Thatamanil, who emigrated from India to the United States as a child, is assistant professor of theology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville. He teaches courses on Hindu-Christian dialogue and Buddhist-Christian dialogue, and wrote The Immanent Divine: God, Creation and the Human Predicament — An East-West Conversation.

Room in the Inn is a coalition of nearly 200 congregations in Nashville, Tennessee, that provide shelter and other services to the city’s homeless. It has become a model for similar programs around the South. Contact executive director Rachel Hester.

Charles Hubbard is director of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn.

James Byrd Jr. is an associate professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where he has taught a class in religion and war in American history. He is also an expert on this story of Baptists and Methodists in the U.S. He has written two books about religion in early American […]

Mike Jaynes is a lecturer in the humanities and English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He has written for About.com about animal rights, including a rebuttal of Christianity’s idea of dominion over the animals.